It's not essential, is my point. The court cases had already resolved in Trump's favor and it was widely expected that they would move forward with these plans soon.

My guess is that they postponed doing it earlier in anticipation of being able to use this as leverage in a shutdown.

So it has something to do with shutdown, as in the shutdown proving to be an essential component in realising those plans?

spiderman

Politics_And_Law

Trump says 'a lot' of federal workers are being laid off

This really has nothing to do with the shutdown, other than it being a convenient pretext.

Agencies prepared massive RIF plans shortly after Trump entered office, but those plans were obstructed by various court cases and were mostly not enacted.